


I took a road I didn’t recognise

by Lilly_C



Series: Inking It Out [69]
Category: Law & Order
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Hospitals, Missing Scene, Post Episode: s13e07 Open Season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-23 02:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12496656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilly_C/pseuds/Lilly_C
Summary: Fierce was the only word he ever associated her with and now it was fragile.





	I took a road I didn’t recognise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missanotherboat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missanotherboat/gifts).



> Spoiler for Open Season, takes place post-ep. The title is a line from Friend and Enemies by Biffy Clyro.
> 
> Thanks to Tamara for doing beta for me, any remaining mistakes are my own and unintentional.

The few minutes it took for the ambulance to leave the scene and for Jack to realise that Lennie had spent most of those trying to get his attention he slowly came out of his reverie. “You want to do what?” Jack asked, realising that he hadn’t heard a single word that anyone had been saying to him while he numbly took in the unfolding scene.

Lennie bit back an irate sigh as he repeated himself. “We need to set up a perimeter and take statements from everyone that was still here at the time of the shooting.”

“Of course detective,” Jack coolly replied quickly adding, “I’ll update Arthur and then go to the hospital.”

Lennie nodded as he watched Jack leave the scene, before returning to where Ed and Serena were stood talking quietly amongst themselves.

~

“Arthur, it’s a lot worse than we anticipated,” Jack blurted out as he barged in to the older man’s office.

“Worse? How?”

Jack took a moment to compose himself before he spoke again. “Danielle Melnick has just been shot. She has taken bullets to the chest and leg, she’s on her way to hospital.”

“Do we have a suspect?” Arthur queried, silently hopeful that the shooter didn’t get away afterwards.

“Yes. She’s been taken to central booking for processing,” he paused, “Briscoe and Green are at the scene, Serena’s staying to help them match names with the staffing lists while they take statements.”

Arthur went to refill his tumbler with a larger than usual helping of whisky, swallowing it in one go. “Why are you still here?” he asked, unsure of Jack’s intentions.

With that Jack left the room, quickly gathering his belongings from his own office before heading down to the car park for his bike. He hoped that the ride to the hospital would give him some time to gather his thoughts about the recent American Patriot Union cases and Danielle’s condition which were currently in a whirlwind.

Jack stopped his bike, quickly getting off and storing it in the special lockers before making his way to the reception area of the hospital. No matter what he said to the duty receptionist, they refused to let him in, insisting that it was only for immediate family and next of kin on record until she was out of surgery. 

Refusing to leave until he had a confirmation of Danielle’s condition, Jack occupied one of the chairs in the waiting room, letting out a defeated sigh when a nurse approached him. “Mr. McCoy,” she greeted, looking as worn and deflated as he felt, sitting beside him matching his position, she said, “We can’t let you in to the see the patient until she’s out of surgery,” cautiously looking around the room, she softly added, “I shouldn’t be doing this but I can call you when she’s out of surgery and can start receiving visitors.”

For the first time since the initial call had come through to Arthur's office, Jack felt himself visibly relax at the kind offer. Reaching into his jacket he produced a slightly bent business card and a pen. “This is my number,” he stated while writing it on the back, putting the pen away as he stood. Shaking the woman’s hand he passed her the card before leaving the hospital, deciding he’d be of no use to the detectives, he went for a long ride to clear his head before heading home for a few hours.

~

In the days following the shooting and subsequent trial, Jack had spent most of his nights after court with Danielle at the hospital. He knew that he didn't need to be there but a part of him didn’t want her to be alone when she eventually came around from the gruelling nineteen hour surgery to remove the bullets and repair as much of the damage that they had caused.

He talked to her while she was sleeping, acutely aware of the continuous beep of the machines and various tubes and wires keeping her alive as she recovered. Somehow during one of the talks his hand had linked with hers, thumb gently massaging the back of her hand, silently telling her that he was there for her.

He couldn’t remember a time in all the years they’d opposed each other in court, in his office or on the street that she looked so small, so frail. Fierce was the only word he ever associated her with and now it was fragile. A small smile formed as he realised that she could bring him down in an instant with an eloquent speech if she ever heard him say that one out loud.

A gentle knock on the door informed him that visiting hours were over for the day. He knew that he’d be back at her side at the same time tomorrow.

~

With the steady stream of visitors who often stopped by for a few minutes during the day for, the doctors had taken the option of brining Danielle out of the medically induced coma after visiting hours so that she could come around and be checked over throughout the night without any interruptions.

It had been several hours since she fully awoke, acutely aware of her surroundings and her injuries, she had tried to watch TV but all she could find to watch were endless repeats on what seemed to be the only working TV channel. In her bedside locker the magazines she pulled out were years out of date and very tatty, even the puzzles had been completed with the answers written over in different colours.

In the end she opted to carefully relax against the pillows waiting for her regular visitor to arrive. 

Noticing the flowers and a new card that Jack had balanced in his hands when he entered the door. “Any news?” Danielle groggily asked, attempting to mask the pain she was feeling now that the painkillers were starting to wear off. 

“Are you okay?” Jack asked, worried as Danielle shifted a little to get comfortable again. “Small victory,” she grimaced as the cramp in her leg slowly eased.

Jack couldn’t hide his happiness at her being awake and alert, it sure would make a change to not have a one-sided conversation. He quickly placed the items on a chair. “Do you want me to call a nurse?” he asked before giving Danielle the cup of water, watching as she greedily took several replenishing sips through a straw.

Brushing off his concern, Danielle replied, “Just a cramp. It’ll pass in a few minutes,” she lied, not wanting to appear any weaker than she currently felt.

He placed the cup back on the table, moving the flowers to an empty space along the windowsill, then he handed her the card. “This is from the two seven,” he said. He paused for a beat, quickly answering her original question. “Guilty on all counts, all sentences to be served concurrently and Judge Reynolds insisted on life without parole in a maximum security facility out of state.”

“Do you know how long?” Jack started to ask when he saw Danielle holding a finger up to stop him asking that question, it was the one she hadn’t yet asked the doctors.

A brief awkward silence descend between them until Danielle said, “You’ve been here every night.”

Quickly averting his gaze around the room, Jack sheepishly smiled at the floor before returning his focus to her. “I have, I was worried about you.” 

There it was, Danielle realised, the elephant in the courthouse, their supposed feelings for each other. They’d been friends for more years than either wanted to admit and had come close to blurring the lines on more than one occasion.

“You didn’t seem worried all that worried when you came to my apartment to accuse me of perjury, Jack.”

Jack bit back a sigh when she brought up the recently concluded cases. “At the time I was well within my rights to wake a judge but I didn’t because I wanted to hear it from you. It didn’t seem right to me that you would knowingly suborn perjury or be an accomplice to a manslaughter but that is where my information took me.”

Danielle’s hand found Jack’s, thumb rubbing the back just like he had with her when she was unconscious. “Listen to me Jack, Julian Proust played me and the entire legal system just so he could play his twisted revenge game using the information from Vance’s palm-pilot. Had I known that the person I was passing that information on to was a hit man I would have gone to the police, you know that.”

 _You know that._ Three simple words that currently held more weight than Jack was feeling comfortable with. “I used to know that,” he said quietly acknowledging her statement. “It’s going to take some time before _I can know that_ again Danielle.”

 _I can know that._ An admission that things would take time to mend between them. Gently smiling at him, she carefully teased, “You’re impossible,” attempting to lighten the mood between them. “Tell me something else.” Not wanting to take the conversation into a currently difficult territory.

“What else is there to tell?” he enquired.

Danielle pondered his question for a moment. “Why have you been here every night?”

Jack was certain his cheeks had tinged with a pinkish red colour at that slightly underhand question. “I have been here every night because I wanted to know that you would be okay and so that I could be here in case you woke up. I didn’t like the idea of you waking up and not having a friend with you.”

Touched by his honesty, Danielle started, “You know something, Jack,” she paused, softly adding, “If the positions were reversed I'd be doing the same for you. While I was out I could have sworn I heard you talking to me.”

“That because I was talking to you. Every night I'd come in, hold your hand and begin telling you about the day I'd had, what cases were won and lost, what the detectives were bringing for use to prosecute next. Heck, I even told you about the night you were shot, I pieced it all together from the statements I’ve had to read through to make my case.”

Danielle let out a low yawn. “Sorry,” she whispered.

Jack shook his head. “Don’t apologise, you’re still recovering. I'll come back tomorrow night, get some rest.”

~

Several days had passed since Jack had been able to get to the hospital, when he finally made it he was over an hour later getting to the hospital than he expected to be. Upon entering Danielle’s room he was surprised to see her sitting in the chair, her leg propped up on the bed which had been lowered to a comfortable height to do so.

“Jack,” she greeted as he grabbed a chair taking it beside her.

“You’re up!” he said with more surprise than he anticipated.

Danielle gave him a conspiratorial glance, beckoning him to lean in closer. “I had the physio in today. The man’s a brute!” she half joked. “I’ve to go back to bed in an hour.”

Jack chuckled at her. “How’s the physio a brute?”

“He made me do some stretches which hurt my sides and then he made me do some work with the crutches to get used to them and then it was light footwork even though I’m not supposed to put any weight on my left leg until I get the cast off in a few weeks time and then I’ll be getting an oxygen boot on as they're better for bearing weight.”

Waiting a few more minutes Danielle spoke again. “The other night, when we were talking about the Proust case. I shouldn’t have cut you off like I did. I realised after you left that was the wrong thing to do.”

Shaking his head at her comment, Jack said, “I should be the one apologising Danielle, I just assumed that you’d be ready to talk about the case and shooting. I was wrong.”

Danielle smiled at his honesty. “I’d like to talk about it now, especially the wire tap that you set up.”

Jack grimaced as his uncouth methods of outing a friend and colleague were brought to the fore once again. “We didn’t see it that way, we didn’t think that we had any other option and we didn’t know if you would have come to us with your concerns. It was a gamble and it both paid off and backfired.”

Taking a few moments to compose herself, Danielle began, “When I first took on Proust’s case and met with him, I honestly thought that it was a simple case relating to the constitution. The more I met with him to discuss his case, I realised that I was beginning to have suspicions about his innocence and true motives but it wasn’t until he gave me the piece of paper with the second name, that I knew those initial suspicions were correct because I couldn’t quite fathom why he’d want me to pass another message along. I knew that with the SAM restrictions that the notes he asked me to take to his contact could be considered to be a work product and also to be attorney-client privilege.”

“You could have come to us or to Briscoe and Green with your concerns and we could have worked with you rather than doing the wire tap.”

“You did what you thought was the right thing at the time Jack.” Danielle let out a long frustrated sigh. “Stop blaming yourself for what I did.”

“I just wished we’d realised when we were notified of Mark Featherstone’s murder that you were been used to circumvent the SAM restrictions.”

“There is an upside to all of this Jack,” Danielle mentioned solemnly. “Had I not been shot, a white supremacist group would still be running around spouting their unpatriotic rhetoric. It’s a small victory.”

A gentle knock at the door signalled that it was time once again for Jack to leave.

Getting up, he leant in kissing her forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Sleep well.”


End file.
